How fast do you believe that you should succeed at anything you try to achieve? Do you believe that, as we live in a world where we have instant coffee, microwaves, instant popcorn etc. it is therefore obvious that success should now also be instant too? Nothing could be further from the truth and your expectations, that success should be instant, may be the very thing, which is keeping you trapped in average.
Success Happens Daily, Never in a Day
Daniel Kahneman wrote a fantastic book, titled “Thinking Fast and Slow” which details the requirements for inviting success into your life. He wrote that the requirements for inviting success into your experience hinge on a combination of fast thinking, which is intuitive, highlights possibility, shows you the end or prize in vivid detail, and also allows you to emotionalise the desired outcome and a systematic deliberative thinking process, which helps you create a good game plan and equips you to find other resources and people with other talents, who can assist you, where necessary.
This means that if you want to positively change the results you are currently enjoying, you need to become patient, developing an understanding that you will achieve the outcomes you desire, as long as you have the daily commitment to consistently take goal specific action, until you succeed. Back this up with intuitive thinking, clarity of vision and a concise blueprint for success and you will become unstoppable.
Set a 10 X Goal – Forces you to rethink everything you are doing
Now that you know the formula for success, as stated in the paragraph above, you now need to break out of your comfort zone. It is no longer acceptable to set goals that only stretch you a little. Goals, which only stretch you a little, keep you thinking the same and you just keep doing the same old things, which have kept you succeeding, at less than satisfactory levels.
If you want to finally break out of average, you need to extend your thinking to new levels, you need to take more focused daily action and you need to invest more time into your personal development. A small goal will only encourage you to take what you are already doing and push it into the future. This will not force you to search and look more deeply to identify opportunities, which may be just in front of you.
10 X Goals, force you to stretch yourself and go beyond average. If you are going to achieve a 10 X goal, you will need to extend yourself, think differently, do differently and improve your skills, abilities and knowledge, in leaps and bounds. In other words, you will need to break out of your self-imposed comfort zone and move into new unchartered territory, where you can achieve 10 times the results you are currently achieving.
Sales Professionals
As a sales professional, you need to re-examine your value proposition, completely understand exactly what you sell, explore your current markets to find new opportunities for your current products, find new products and markets where you can expand and stretch yourself beyond what you have done until now. You really need to think and act very differently if you want to expand and stretch yourself to achieve 10 times what you are currently doing.
Once you adopt this 10 X thinking, it is incredible how many new opportunities, resources and capabilities, which were hidden from you before, will be revealed to you. Things will not appear to you because they miraculously arrived as if by magic, but rather because now you have stretched yourself into a new realm of thinking and you have programmed your mind to look for them. Give 10 X thinking and goal setting a whirl. You will astound yourself with what you can actually achieve.
Discovering Multipliers to help you achieve you 10 X Goals
In business or as sales professionals, your success is a function of two things, namely productivity and profitability. Productivity means that you are enjoying the same results in less time or you are managing to achieve a far greater result in the same amount of time. Profitability means that you are making far more money, but you are managing to keep more of what you make, due to higher margins or reduced costs.
As a sales professional, if you therefore need to find innovative ways or multipliers to improve either your productivity or profitability.
The type of multipliers, I am referring to here are things like:
Asking for referrals
Upselling to your existing customers
Selling additional products or services to your existing customers
Improving your margins by finding innovative ways to improve the perception of your value proposition.
Reducing the cost of acquiring new customers.
What other ways can think of, to improve you productivity or profitability?
Achieving your 10 X Sales Targets
Anthony Robbins was absolutely correct, when he said “People overestimate what they can achieve in a year and massively underestimate all they can achieve in a decade”. It is for this reason that I want you to set your 10 X goal, over 3 years and not 12 months.
Write your sales targets for the next 12 months, 24 Months and 3 years below:
12 Months________________________________________
24 Months_________________________________________
3 Years___________________________________________
Remember that I want your 3 year goal to be 10 X larger than your current sales target.
Project yourself into the future, three years from now, where you have achieved your 10 X goal. Write your 10 X sales target that you intend to achieve below, ______________
What can you see on that day three years from now?
What has changed?
What is new?
What is true?
What is the same?
Try to visualise the day three years from now, where you have achieved your 10 X Goal and write down as many answers to the above questions as possible.
What is in your Way?
Look around your world on that day and identify anything, which is standing in your way and stopping you from achieving your 10 X goal.
Are there any people, standing in your way?
What systems are preventing you from achieving your 10 X goal?
Are there any resources lacking?
Is a lack of skill holding you back?
What lack of knowledge is preventing you from achieving your 10 X goal?
What lack of abilities is stopping you from achieving your 10 X sales target?
Is there anything else, which may be standing in your way?
Now take your negative cap off and take a fresh look at your world and try to discover, all the things, which are working.
What can you see, feel, hear, taste and smell?
What are you doing?
What have you become?
Using the information you have gathered, by looking into the future and identifying all the things, which may be missing, create a blue print, which will help you to overcome these challenges. This plan must include a daily action plan to guide you to overcome all the obstacles, which are in your way three years from now, preventing you from achieving your 10 X goal.
Action Plan: Starting tomorrow, use your plan to guide you to take action to remove all the challenges and obstacles you have identified above. Keep taking the right daily action, week by week, month by month and quarter by quarter, until you gradually remove all the obstacles, which will prevent you from achieving your 10 X goal, three years from now.
If you commit to this process, I am certain that you will achieve your 10 X sales target, three years from now. Imagine if you fail and you only achieve 5 X your current sales target, I don’t think you will be disappointed. Give this a try, you have so much to gain and nothing to lose.
Andrew Horton is one of South Africa's top sales training experts. He will support, uplift and inspire sales professionals to explore the limits of their potential and awaken the sales giants, which resides within all of them. His sales training presentation is aimed at inspiring sales professionals, helping them to become re-energised and eager to achieve their sales targets. The sales tools and powerful tried and tested practical sales techniques, they will be introduced to during his presentation, will help any sales professional to immediately up their game and to become a real sales giant, within their markets. Visit my website at http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/sales-training